Texans Biggest Opponent this Week is Not Jacksonville

I live in a small coastal town in Florida and there’s a large inter-coastal river with a bunch of islands.

Every now and then, we take my friend’s sailboat and go camping on one of the islands.

A couple of years ago, we decided to sail to the neighboring county and try a different set of islands.

The plan was beautiful.  We would sail down for eight hours, set up camp, party all night, and then have another eight hour sail back home the next day.

I mean, could you possibly ask for a better weekend?  Even the weather was perfect.

It turns out, however, that our plan had one major flaw.

You see, we decided that for this trip, beer would take up too much space and we would need to bring too much ice, so we brought a bunch of whiskey instead.

I think you see where I’m going with this.

While the first part of our trip was everything we could have hoped for, the subsequent sail home turned into eight hours of wavy hell.

I normally love being on the water, but on that day, I just wanted to jump overboard and let the sweet grip of death take away my pain.

Week 13 of the NFL season feels eerily familiar.

Everything was going so well only a short while ago.  The Texans were in second place in the division, playing well, and had a real shot of making the playoffs.

Now, while we should be enjoying the marvel that is NFL football, I just get a headache.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that bad.

The team still has a shot at the playoffs, right?

All we have to do is win out!

Hey, it’s possible.

And I’m sure that between now and Sunday, I’ll find some way to convince myself of that.

There’s no question that on Sunday I’ll be jumping up and down and screaming at my TV with all the passion and excitement that I do every week.

And we definitely have a chance to beat the Jaguars, right?

A few weeks ago, I stopped writing technical previews of the upcoming Texans games as we got to know more and more about both the Texans and their opponents.

Furthermore, we were staring right into the teeth of the schedule—four straight divisional games.

We are all familiar with the fact that Indianapolis is undefeated and that Peyton Manning is dangerous.

You don’t need me to write that Chris Johnson is a threat and not to discount Vince Young when he’s playing back home.

This week, we know that containing Maurice Jones-Drew and keeping David Garrard in the pocket are the technical keys to victory.

So what?

I can write, “This is a huge game for the Texans,” a hundred times on the chalkboard, but for the fourth game in a row, the biggest opponent is wearing steel blue helmets.

We know they have the players and the ability to win.

We’ve seen them dominate the best team in the league—just not for sixty minutes.

So far the team is saying all the right things about the attitude in the locker room and about their outlook for this game.

They really seem to believe that they still have a shot at the playoffs, and if I didn’t have such a headache, I might even agree with them.

Right now, though, I’m still feeling the effects of all those shots of Texans I’ve taken recently.

Whether or not I start to recover depends on whether or not the Texans can overcome their missed opportunities and their inability to meet expectations.

Do the players feel the same hangover?

Does the rocking of the boat make them feel like jumping?

We won’t know that answer until after halftime on Sunday.

If the Texans come out scorching hot or ice cold means nothing.

The questions will be answered at some point during an inevitable, critical second half moment when Matt Schaub drops back to pass and either confidently throws a key completion or meekly tosses a pass into triple coverage.

We’re loading up the boat for the return trip and there’s still a chance that this trip lives up to the lofty expectations we had at the beginning.

I don't feel to confident and am struggling to garner too much excitement, but we’ve come this far and have no choice but to fight and follow through to the finish.

What’s that they say about the hair of the dog?